Startup Rella ramping up its management tool for social media influencers
Natalie Barbu has been a content creator since her days in high school making beauty and fashion videos on YouTube. She continued posting lifestyle content while in college, where she majored in engineering. About three years ago, she quit her day job in a corporate consulting firm to create social media content full time.
Now Barbu has founded a startup, Rella, to make the business side of being a content creator easier. It’s the company she would have liked to use when she was becoming a content creator and social media influencer.
“Something that I had always struggled with was having the tools behind me that really allowed me to treat what I was doing as a business. And so I really I thought that there must be a better way to manage this business rather than what I was doing, which was a bunch of Excel spreadsheets using project management tools,” said Barbu, who founded the business (rellasocial.com) in 2021.
She and her two cofounders, both with technology expertise, launched a minimal viable product in January and the startup is ramping up new features and acquiring more users. So far, Rella, which was selected the first runner-up in the community track of the 2022 Miami Herald Startup Pitch Competition, has reeled in 6,400 users. The track was managed by Endeavor Miami, the startup support and networking group with expertise scaling young companies.
Before they launched, they talked to influencers, sharing what they were building, and ran focus groups to gather feedback. “When it was time to launch, we already had a big community already supporting us,” Barbu said.
Barbu’s team at this time is her co-founders, Nick Kane and Connor Boyce, and five part-time contractors. Barbu raised a small friends-and-family financing round and will soon be fundraising. The startup is pre-revenue now but intends to introduce tiers for monthly subscriptions.
Before starting Rella, Barbu ran an e-commerce store for about a year and also ran a consultancy/ agency that helped other influencers and brands grow their presence on social media. What she learned from those other ventures was the importance of community. The challenge now is keeping up with the user growth and scaling while at the same time trying to fundraise. What’s next?
“Largely a lot of new features that help influencers understand their revenue. That’s really the way that we’re taking Rella — making sure that influencers understand the revenue coming in, their projected revenue, their expenses, their analytics, and viewing it as an actual business rather than just a hobby,” she said. “We are made for creators by creators, and we’re building this alongside them.”